One of the biggest cyber risks to any organization is a criminal gaining unauthorized access to their systems, as though they were an employee, by using stolen or guessed credentials. And unfortunately, many people use the same password (or an easily guessable one) for all of their personal and professional log-ins. That means that if your password is compromised in one breach, it's available to anyone.
Password Managers are always recommended to help make strong password use automatic and reasonable. While there is some level of risk associated with storing passwords on a third-party password manager, the advantages outweigh this risk.
When using a password manager, you first create one strong "master password" that's like the skeleton key to your all of your passwords. A passphrase, which is a string of unrelated words like "excited-related-begin-owned", is the most secure and memorable option. Once you've set your master password, the password manager will create and store strong, unique passwords for all logins. And the best part? You only need to remember your master password -- once you enter this into the password manager, the password for each unique log-in will be automatically filled.
Password manager advantages:
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Remember one strong password, use strong unique passwords everywhere else.
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Strong passwords are randomly generated, and don’t need to be remembered.
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Strong authentication (such as 2-Factor Authentication) can be required for password managers and should definitely be utilized.
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Sharing may be enabled in some password managers, making it safer to share secrets with a defined group.
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Many password managers support organizational management, so good policies can be enforced centrally.
Examples of password managers
- 1Password
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DashLane
Important: ALWAYS secure your password manager master password with multi-factor authentication!
As always, Coalition is here to help you on your way. Please reach out to us for additional information!